NewsMax - 10 Dec 2017 - Today is Human Rights Day! Is this a day for celebration or mourning? Ordinarily, such a day would be for festivity; but, this day is not a usual moment in time. Why? The Iranian regime is the source of human rights abuses. Iran is not a typical state. It has the trappings of being normal, when, in fact, the regime is anything but ordinary. Iran specializes in detaining of political prisoners.

Developments in the Middle East have placed the spotlight once again on Iran and its hegemonic temptations. This goes parallel to calls from parties such as France and Germany, whom Iran previously counted on in the face of U.S. pressures, demanding Tehran reel in its ballistic missile program and support for proxy groups across the region.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a panel at the National Press Club by the Washington Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US), human rights experts called for accountability for Iranian regime's human rights abuses.

Referring to NCRI's newly released book, "Iran, Where Mass Murderers Rule, The 1988 Massacre of 30,000 Political Prisoners and the Continuing Atrocities," former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission,

Prisoner of conscience Golrokh Iraee sent an open letter from Evin Prisonwhere she is detained calling for justice for the perpetrators of the 1980s massacres in Iran. The letter comes in the wake of the acceptance by the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances of the complaint filed by political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared demanding information about the fate of her siblings executed during the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988. In parts of her letter, Ms. Iraee writes:

Introduction

Iran’s Kermanshah Earthquake

A magnitude 7.3 earthquake shook western Iran on Sunday November 12. This has been the deadliest quake in the world this year.The majority of victims were Iranian. “More than 1,000 people have lost their lives,” Iranian MP Ahmad Safari said to the state-run ILNA news agency 72 hours after the quake.“I went to a village where they said they pulled 20 corpses from under the rubble. They were not even counted in the death toll. 70 people died just in one alley of the town of Sarpol-e Zahab.

“Thirteen years – thirteen years old!” the interviewer repeats, proudly, as the camera pans upward to the grinning, bearded faces of uniformed men, apparently Iranian soldiers, who pat their young recruit on the back.

Prisoner of conscience Golrokh Iraee sent an open letter from Evin Prison where she is detained calling for justice for the perpetrators of the 1980s massacres in Iran. The letter comes in the wake of the acceptance by the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances of the complaint filed by political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared demanding information about the fate of her siblings executed during the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988.

The jailing of a British citizen highlights a crackdown on journalists at home and abroad

BEHIND the grimy frosted windows of an abandoned shopfront in the backstreets of central London lies a plush modern office, full of banks of computer screens monitoring Iran’s internet output. The office is one of many Western media projects working to outwit the censors who seek to suppress all but the official discourse of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Much of the funding comes from America’s Near East Regional Democracy programme, which allocates about $30m a year to promoting democracy and human rights in Iran.